Kalona Mini Buildings is hard to miss, located as it is prominently on Hwy 1 just a bit north of Hwy 22 in Kalona. It percolates with color: candy-striped Adirondak chairs in red and white, iconic barns in Barbie pink, and storage sheds in John Deere green.

As an Amish owned and operated business, dedicated to quality, craftsmanship, and attention to detail, it embodies exactly what the ‘Kalona’ brand generally has come to stand for.

But for a 30-year-old business, KMB’s visibility came about only recently. And that’s thanks to Chester Ropp, it’s “fearless leader,” who took ownership about 7.5 years ago when he was 21 years old. So yes, that makes Ropp slightly younger than his business.

Originally KMB was founded by his uncle, who built mini buildings just down the road from where Ropp grew up. It changed hands a couple of times, leaving family ownership, but then it became available and Ropp decided to take it on.

For a couple of years, he and his brother built sheds in their dad’s shop out by Community Country Store, but Ropp knew the little business was “definitely scalable.” He imagined KMB as “the leading small building supplier in the entire Midwest.”

How do you approach such a goal from the backroads of Kalona?

“Well, by sitting down and doing the numbers strategy. What’s the best plan of action? Put your goals in place. Put them on paper, it’s very important. And then just build it from there. Put your timelines down,” Ropp says.

“It really starts with your own personal motivation. That’s where its, at,” he continues. “If you don’t have that in place, you can’t motivate other people and you can’t inspire other people. That’s been something I’ve always focused on, the self-development of being able to lead the team, and it’s definitely been paying off.”

To scale up, KMB had to move out of the home shop. Ropp purchased the property on Highway 1 in 2020 and moved production and sales there in 2021.

No longer able to do every task himself, “that’s when we started delegating it out,” he says. Today there are 12 employees selling, building sheds and furniture, and making deliveries. There’s a member of the sales team in Des Moines as well, chipping away at that goal of dominating the Midwest market.

Every day there are three or four mini buildings being constructed inside the 25,000-square-foot warehouse. On the day I visit, two tiny homes are well under way, and a storage shed is coming together.

For the most part, customers dictate what they want and the team builds to order, although some stock is on hand in the lot for those who need a quick transaction.

What are folks ordering?

“I would say one of our best sellers is going to be our garage, a 12x20 garage where people put in their lawn mowers and some of their odds and ends backyard stuff,” Ropp says.

But tiny home sales are on the rise too: “We’ve done quite a bit of tiny homes already. Demand is definitely there, with affordable housing what it is.”

Having long admired tiny homes, I take advantage of this opportunity to step inside a completed one on the KMB lot. It’s compact, yes, but all the life essentials are there, and I can imagine the adventure of sleeping in the loft and baking cookies in the kitchen. The warm wood is beautiful, and there’s plenty of natural light.

“There are some camping properties where people use them, but there’s also tiny home villages where people actually need to have a tiny home on wheels in order to move in there,” Ropp says. “And even the older generation, instead of going to the old people’s home or something, somebody might go buy something like this and put it up adjacent to their house and have their mom and dad living out there.”

KMB does all the work, including electrical, plumbing, and appliances, so that a new tiny home is ready to move into. While the typical lead time on a garage or shed is four to six weeks, a tiny home may take two months to build. Delivery within 100 miles is free regardless of what you purchase; after that there’s a fee per mile.

So what’s next for KMB?

More products for the outdoor living space. Two years ago Ropp began working with TimberCraft Poly Furniture, retailing it from a location in Indiana, and “We saw the need to be able to source our own and make our own designs,” Ropp says. Today one end of the warehouse is dedicated to building the all-weather outdoor furniture – chairs, dining sets, fire pit tables, garden benches, and swivel gliders, all backed with a lifetime warranty.

Last year they started building outdoor pavilions. “That’s the newest product line on our lot,” he says. “Yesterday we put one up for the City of Ainsworth in the park. So there’s definitely a need for those; people want them for parks, backyards, those kinds of things.”

This level of growth means Ropp foresees KMB outgrowing its warehouse space in the not-too-distant future.

“The next really big step is going to be having a new location for [building] the furniture, and then sheds would take over the rest of this spot,” he says.

Driving by businesses at 55 mph on the morning or evening commute, we seldom look deeper into what really goes on there, how they were built and where they are headed. But there’s much to be learned by doing so, whether we see ourselves as potential customers, fellow business owners, or scribes of local history.

And as for Kalona Mini Buildings, a flagship of the community 30 years in the making. . .

“There are always opportunities,” Ropp says. “We’re always open to new ways and better ways, anything from process to, what do people need? That’s where we focus our growth.”

Kalona Mini Buildings is located at 1034 Hwy 1, Kalona. Drop by the office or visit the website, kalonaminibuildings.com, to learn more, and visit with the team at the Kalona Home Show, March 27-28.